Communication and Media - Terri Byers - Simon Chadwick

Terri Byers - Coventry University
Simon Chadwick - Coventry University
Trevor Slack - University of Alberta

Terri Byers

Terri Byers is a Principal Lecturer in Sport Management at Coventry Univeristy and has recently been awarded an Applied Research Fellowship to support her research work on Sport in Developing Nations (in collaboration with Professor Trevor Slack from the Univeristy of Alberta, Canada and Professor Simon Chadwick, also of Coventry Univeristy). Terri has research interests in voluntary sport organsiations, control and change within sport and has published in these and other issues such as strategic decision-making in small firms and managing operations in sport and leisure.

Simon Chadwick

Simon became Professor of Sport Business Strategy and Marketing at Coventry University Business School in 2007, having previously worked at the University of Leeds and the University of London. At Coventry, he is a Director of CIBS (Centre for the International Business of Sport), and was a founder, and remains a Director, of London University’s Birkbeck Sport Business Centre. Simon has published extensively in the areas of sport marketing and sport business strategy, and has collaborated with various organisations and sports bodies including the FA and Sport England, as well as a number of professional sports clubs. He has also worked as a consultant to sport businesses on a variety of projects. In 2007, Simon will be a Chair of Sport Business Campus in London, and will also serve as a member of the Scientific Committees for the Play the Game and European Association of Sport Management conferences. Simon is the founder and Chair of both the Academy of Marketing's SportMarketing Special Interest Group and the European

Trevor Slack

Trevor Slack is a Professor at the University of Alberta, adjunct Professor at the University of Ottawa and Visiting Professor at Coventry University. In 2001, he became a Canadian Research Chair in sport management. His areas of expertise are organization theory and strategic management. His current research focuses on sport in emerging economies. He has published widely in journals such as Organization Studies, Academy of Management Journal, Journal of Sport Management, Journal of Leisure Research and European Sport Management Quarterly, for example. He has also published a number of books and chapters on the management of sport.

Abstract
A Collaborative Strategic Model – The Only Way Forward For African Sport?

Abstract: Over the last two decades, sport across the world has changed dramatically. This has partly been the result of a more commercial orientation, particularly in elite professional sports that has, in turn, emanated from a multitude of factors including changing technology and new forms of broadcasting. Such changes have raised the profile of sport and those associated with it to an unprecedented level. This has created immense opportunities for media corporations, broadcasters, sponsors and commercial partners to fully exploit the ‘sport product’. However, there have otherwise been adverse consequences in this commercial race for sport, notably problems: for those not involved in top-level, elite sport; for less popular sport; and a widening gap between commercially and less commercially attractive sports. Around this, a range of management issues has arisen including matters of ethics and governance, social responsibility, organisational change and marketing.

With the forthcoming FIFA World Cup due to take place in South Africa in 2010, one can predict that Africa will increasingly become the focus for global corporations and wider commercial interests. Indeed, the potential for competition and commercial gain is already evident in recent moves by Means and Nauright (2007). In this context, it is therefore likely that Africa will be exposed to the types of problem already being encountered by sport elsewhere in the world. Given the potentially destructive nature of this approach to the management of sport, this paper sets out to propose an alternative model of sport – one in which a strategic and collaborative approach is adopted. Drawing from the work of Child et al. (2005) and May and Phelan (2005), the paper will advocate that a collaborative rather than a competitive approach to the commercial development of sport should be adopted in Africa. In so doing, it will highlight the key characteristics of strategic collaboration, th
e forms it can take, what some of the management challenges associated with it are, and how it can help African sport address the challenges posed by prevailing socio-economic conditions.

References
Child, J., Faulkner, D., and Tallman, S. (2005), Cooperative Strategy: Managing Alliances, Networks, and Joint Ventures, Oxford University Press, Oxford, UK.
May, G., and Phelan, J. (2005), Shared Goals – Sport and Business in Partnership for Development, International Business Leaders Forum, accessed 9th October 2007 from http://www.nextstep2007.org/assets/File/SharedGoalsW.pdf
Means, J., and Nauright, J. (2007), Sports development meets sports marketing: Basketball without borders and the NBA in Africa, in Chadwick, S., and Arthur, D., International Cases in the Business of Sport, Butterworth Heinemann, Oxford, UK.